


Smoke, mirrors and burning fire

by Lumeha



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Gen, Hopeful Ending, Horror, Mass Death, Pathologic crossover, Press Start Zine, There is hope buried in horror, alternative universe, description of corpses, epidemic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27715306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumeha/pseuds/Lumeha
Summary: One town. One epidemic. Three healers.Lyon woke up in a grave, curled against the cold, dark earth, a burning stone between his hands. He knew more than he should, and yet he knew less than he wanted. But there was an epidemic. And there was his twin, his shadow, with a cortege of rats and whispers running along desolated streets.They didn't need a cure. They needed a miracle.
Relationships: Fodeth | Fomortiis & Lyon
Kudos: 4





	Smoke, mirrors and burning fire

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was written for the _Press Start Zine_ , dedicated to crossovers between Fire Emblem and other video-games. While I couldn't put down all my ideas in this piece, and nor could I be as talented as the Pathologic writers, this was a tiny love-letter to two games that I love dearly and who have both an interesting and strange relation between two characters who have a deeper bond than most expect.
> 
> Also, I really, _really_ wanted to have Valter play a role in this as the Inquisitor, and couldn't properly add him into the narration.

Grey clouds hung low in the sky, and the cold of the earth was seeping in Lyon's flesh. He shivered. There was no sound; it was him, the bleak light of the early morning, and exhaustion weighing on his limbs. It was hunger, too, as it stabbed at his guts. Against his stomach, his hands were curled, and the edges of his fingers were set alight by the stone he was cradling against himself. There was a warmth in its magic, a warmth that nothing else offered here.

"Graves aren't the place to take a nap," a young girl with pale eyes and hair said in a soft, wispy voice. "You will disturb the dead if you stay here."

Crouched near the ditch, she was observing him, as if trying to decipher what he was doing there. He wondered how she was staying so still, sitting on her heels, when she reached out. Her hand was as cold as the dirt. 

After she offered him food -- bread and milk offered to the dead she was taking care of -- followed by the hum of a lullaby reverberating in the air, she told him that he was awaited at the Governor's home. When he asked how she knew, she shrugged and turned her head away, looking off to the distance, to the graves placed in chaotic rows, as if by the hand of a child. 

“The Mistress said you were going to arrive,” she said after a long silence. “The Governor trusts her.”

**x-x-x**

The Governor, a man called Innes, was younger than Lyon expected, with a cold gaze and a strict expression. Standing next to him was a woman whose smile didn't quite reach her eyes, despite doing her best to appear cheerful. Responsibilities weighed them down both. Despite the Governor’s detached attitude, Lyon felt studied to the most minute of details, from the way he was standing to the stains of dirt on his boots. Studied, and judged.

"Word on the streets is that you are a liar and a thief. A man ready to take what isn't his, by deception and trickery."

It sent a shiver down his spine, twisted the tiredness in his flesh into a quiet flash of pain that stole his breath.  _ He _ had arrived in town before himself, then ? "No. No, I detest trickery," he protested, but his voice was weak and shivering.

And yet, even as Innes was looking at him with suspicion, he asked : "What do you have to say to defend yourself?"

"It was my brother. My twin. I am innocent of these crimes. I am here to help."

"I see. I do not know if I can trust your word...but I trust Tana's," he said, turning to the woman. She tilted her head, her smile so bright it was almost believable. "Despite her support, I will need proof that you are here to help, not to destroy. Do you understand?"

**x-x-x**

The witness was a woman whose face was as kind as it was serious. As she guided him in silence in the Town’s streets, he had tried to speak with her. But she had refused to answer any of his questions about herself, the sick person he was supposed to help, or her employer. With a smile, she had refused to give even her name. After multiple attempts, he let silence fall between them, and started observing the townspeople, who looked at him with suspicion. He knew the witness’ presence was the only protection he had, and he stuck to her until they arrived in the main square. 

“Bachelor Knoll.” A man standing near the house at the corner of the street they left, gaze lost in the red patches that grew on the bricks, turned and gave her a nod. His lavender hair was neatly tied up, and his stark black coat made him stand out in a crowd of washed out and tired colours. “Here is the man the Governor told you about. Do you want to assist me as a second witness ?”

“Yes. Thank you, Syrene.” 

The inside of the house was dark, curtains blocking all the lights from the outside, the shadows stretching from one wall to the other. The strange patches that adorned the facade of the building had an echo weaved in between the joints of the wood and tiles. In the corner of his eyes, he could see, through an open door, the kitchen furniture thrown unto the floor, cutlery and broken glass spilled all over the floor. Dust floated, suspended in the air, and Knoll pulled a mask out of his coat to tie around his face. 

The silence was broken by moans of pain, and Lyon tensed. Knoll led them to a bedroom on the upper floor, in as much of a disarray as the kitchen. A woman laid there, curled on herself, her skin a sickly yellow and her eyes red, so red, so dry. What Lyon had mistaken for wrinkles were cracks, spreading from the corner of her eyes like lightning. She did not react when he approached the bed and sat next to her, nor when he brushed her hair away from her face.

“Can you heal her?” Knoll’s voice was tight as he looked over the woman. 

Against his other hand, the stone in his pocket was warm. Pinpricks of pain ran under his skin as he pulled energy from its depths to pour into the one suffering in front of him. Under his fingers, her flesh stitched itself back together, the angry red lines that marred her face disappeared. 

With a quiet exhale, her body relaxed and sunk into the bed, her eyes fluttering shut. Lyon smiled, despite his own pain. 

**x-x-x**

Morning of the second day. 

51 infected. 14 dead. 5 missing.

Eleven days remaining. 

**x-x-x**

No one in the town was prepared, Knoll told Lyon when they met the next day at the Governor’s. Innes had left with Tana for the day, after ordering them to find the source of the infection, and Knoll was looking out of the window, hands clasped behind his back. “We are three. Only three, against a deadly sickness that only three patients so far have been cured of,” he said, his voice heavy with a weariness Lyon felt was older than this mission. “Your powers tire you out. And the townsfolk hate Saleh. Fear him.” 

They needed a miracle.

Lyon was going to give them one. 

**x-x-x**

Morning of the seventh day. 

638 infected. 397 dead. 32 missing.

Six days remaining. 

**x-x-x**

Lyon swept away the sweat pearling against his forehead. His skin was tacky, a streak of dirt and blood stuck to his cheek, and his lungs were burning with the heavy scent of the infection running free in the district. With a painful deep breath, the air so thick he could taste it at the back of his throat, he let his thoughts stop, let himself be to clear his mind. 

At this game of cat and mouse between him and his brother, he had failed each day. But he knew he was played with. Letters taunted him, little provocations that he had not been able to decipher in time, his brother only giving himself away in riddles and covert words, all while taunting him. 

Around the house he was standing in front of, a swarm of rats had gathered, a writhing mass of fur snapping at his ankles as he walked to the entrance. The hinges of the door creaked and groaned when he entered, and his throat closed as he took in its state. 

A kid was lying down on the floor, curled tight on himself, his fingers digging deep in his arms. 

Lyon crouched down, but it was as if he was not there. There was nothing he could do, beyond washing the pain away, and hoping that he would not get infected again. There were so  _ many _ , crumpled to the ground, unable to move, paralyzed by their suffering.

_ You lost _ , a voice so similar to his own whispered with a cackle. It was a little distorted, harsher at the edges, but he knew it as well as he knew his own words.  _ You lost, little miracle worker, you lost so many of them already _ .

He found him in the kitchen, his back turned away from the door, eyes fixed in the dark mold left on the wall by the plague. “You bore me, Lyon,” the mirror image of himself said. He didn’t bother with the trappings of humanity, his chest still as a corpse’s as he refused to blink, his eyes reddened and drawn with ashes. 

“But you need me,” Lyon answered, as he rolled the sacred stone between his fingers. It was the key to win this fight, but he still hadn’t found how to use it to definitively burn away the infection in sick bodies or the streets of the town. “Or you would ignore me. Kill me.” 

“You can’t fight me. What have you accomplished ?” His head tilted to the side, his smile a wound cut through his face. It was a touch too large, teeth a little too sharp. “I have all the power, and _ I am winning _ .” 

Lyon bristled at the accusation. The mountain of corpses, the patients in Knoll’s hastily installed hospital, the unsuccessful panacea Saleh worked so hard to create, and the poor boy at the entrance of this house were all witnesses to their despair. But he refused to let him win. 

“The plague is spreading. Soon, you will all be dead.”

Lyon took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Between his ribs, his lungs rattled against his heart. 

“I am impatient, Lyon. So impatient.”

When he opened his eyes again, he was alone. But the air was clear once more in the house. Outside the door, Lyon noticed the rats had left, and, with them, the infection invading the district. 

It was a victory. Bitter, and small, but a victory nonetheless. 

**x-x-x**

Morning of the eighth day. 

738 infected. 503 dead. 19 missing.

Five days remaining. 

**x-x-x**

The heat in Saleh’s workroom was intolerable. It made Lyon feel as if the skin of his face was going to melt and reveal lines etched in black and white hidden under the mask. Bundles of dried herbs were lined against the wall, above the desk where Saleh stood. Knoll, at the table at the center of the room, had removed his coat and his gloves, and was going over his own notes, written in a tight, compact handwriting that was impossible to decipher. Lyon hesitated to do the same, but felt uncomfortable at the idea of removing one of his layers of protection. 

“This ‘twin’ of yours is, in your opinion, the true origin of the infection, is that it?” Saleh asked, voice flat. The man was hard to read, a permanent frown etched on his face since the first day of the plague. But Knoll had vouched for him. 

Lyon confirmed with a nod. Some townsfolk refused to believe him, and many confused him with the ghastly figure of his brother. But Saleh had accepted it, easily. Perhaps he was too worried about the sick children he was trying to protect to bother doubting the words of someone he knew helped.

“If this is right, it does confirm the magical nature of the plague. It isn’t a lot, and it doesn’t explain why staves or commonly used spells aren’t working, but…” Saleh put down the spellbook he had been thumbing through with a shake of his head. “If only we had more time.”

“Or understood why you can heal some people, and not others. And why you suffer so much from it,” Knoll added with a sigh, closing his journal with a soft  _ thud _ . Every passing day, the shadows under his eyes darkened, as he lost more and more patients under his care. 

Lyon clenched a hand around the stone in his pocket. In the suffocating heat, its warmth was burning his fingers. Only the girl from the cemetery had seen it, when he woke up, all these days ago. Since then, he had been careful to hide it, unsure if he could trust anyone with its existence. But Knoll and Saleh... With a deep breath, to calm his racing heart and the twist in his guts, he pulled his hand out. His palm was reddened, despite the pale light glowing from the stone. “Maybe this can help you understand.”

Both men turned to look at him. Saleh’s half-closed eyes studied the light dancing along his hand, the way it highlighted the nicks and scratches covering his fingers. Knoll pushed his chair and approached, unsure if he had any rights to touch the stone, but fascinated by it nonetheless. 

“Maybe you can help me understand,” Lyon said. 

They looked at each other for a long moment, before Knoll extended his hand, waiting for Lyon to entrust him with the stone. Cold needles prickled his skin as soon as it left his grasp. But there was reverence in Knoll’s eyes, illuminated by the pale light of the stone, the proof of a miracle that had escaped their grasp until now. 

"This is incredible, Lyon. This magic… I have never felt one like this before."

**x-x-x**

Morning of the tenth day. 

689 infected. 604 dead. 12 missing.

Three days remaining. 

**x-x-x**

Another house. Another infected district. Another street lined with rats and panic. The sensation of  _ déjà vu _ was impossible to avoid.

But he was waited for at the door, this time. 

Lyon clenched his fists as he looked to the man in front of him. The eyes. It was the eyes, he decided, that everyone should have looked at to understand that they were different. One who tried to help, and one who brought disaster, and it showed in their  _ eyes _ . 

He took a step, and his twin didn't move. Simply looked at him, gaze void and smile empty as he opened his arms in a parody of a warm and welcoming embrace. 

"Aren't you tired of fighting, Lyon ?"

He was. Oh, yes, he was, and it gnawed at his ribs and weighed his eyelids. But he shook his head, refused to give in to the hopelessness similar to the one that had settled in Knoll’s heart. And the other laughed, low, the sound grating like the persistent buzzing of insects against his ears. 

“You can’t win. Without me, you can’t win.” 

“Don’t be so sure of yourself, little miracle worker,” his twin snarled. "I never needed you. I existed long before you did. I am older than the story itself." 

One more step. Lyon took the extended hand, the ironic invitation for affection, and wrapped his arms around the still body of his twin. Cold fingers stopped at the nape of his hair, made him shiver, sharp nails scratching at the sensitive skin. The simulacrum of familial love made him nauseous as the claws dug into his neck, as he tightened his own grasp on the other that an almost breath was taken out of his body of clay and lies.

The pain was fast and ruthless, lightning Lyon’s veins ablaze as the stone shone in his closed fist. The power to burn away the infection, to set the body on fire from the inside as the magic cleansed flesh and bones, was contained in the tool of miracle. If only he had known earlier. 

Not everyone was able to survive it.

“The story ends without you.”

A laugh answered him, and Lyon closed his eyes, so tight he was barely aware of the bonfire lit between his arms. 

**x-x-x**

Morning of the thirteenth day.

A young girl hid behind Saleh's legs, and the only trace of a smile on his face was in the way the corner of his eyes creased as he looked over her, a hand mussing her purple hair. She looked at Knoll with curiosity, and the man, tired, exhausted after twelve days of running himself ragged, kneeled to be at her level. 

Further behind, Lyon turned his back to them to look at the night sky gently disappearing, erased in shades of pinks and golds. It was the first morning, since that day in the graveyard, that he had the time to look at the sun rise. His bandaged hands still shook as he felt the blood of the tragedy drying against his skin, the weight of too many lives pointlessly lost. 

But he smiled. 


End file.
